Première Aliyah
The First Aliyah (Hebrew: העלייה הראשונה, HaAliyah HaRishona), also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Syria between 1881 and 1903. Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated. Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease. Because there had been a wave of immigration to Palestine starting in the mid-19th century (between 1840 and 1880, the Jewish population rose from 9,000 to 23,000), use of the term "First Aliyah" is controversial. Nearly all of the Jews from Eastern Europe before that time came from traditional Jewish families who were not inspired by modern Zionist ideology, but rather by traditional ideas of the holiness of the land combined with practical / economic considerations. The First Aliyah occurred from 1881 to 1903 and did not go as planned as Zionists ran out of funds. The Rothschild organization rescued the Zionist movement by funding Zionists and by purchasing large settlements and by creating new settlements. The first central committee for the settlement was established by a convention of "Unions for the Agricultural Settlement of Israel" held on January 11, 1882, in Romania. It arranged passage to Israel aboard ships operating out of Galați. After the first wave in the early 1880s, there was another spike in 1890. The Russian Empire officially approved the activity of Hovevei Zion in 1890. The same year, the "Odessa Committee" began its operation in Jaffa. The purpose of this organization was to absorb immigrants to Ottoman Syria who came as a result of the activities of Hovevei Zion in Russia. Also Russian Jewry's situation deteriorated as the authorities continued to push Jews out of business and trade and Moscow was almost entirely cleansed of Jews. The relationship of the members of the First Aliyah with the Old Yishuv was strained.
